Take the cape off Obama

Black folks need to take the cape off President Obama and try one on for size ourselves!

Warning: This isn’t an anti-Obama rant; far from it! It’s a call to action for a community that has had to save itself as opposed to awaiting political help from on high.

Things are so bad (Black male unemployment alone is at a 40-year high! ); morale so low and prospects so bleak that Black folks need to “suit up” and creatively tackle this Depression.

I’m not preaching separatism by the way — I’m preaching survival! On an integrationist note the moans and groans figuratively heard across town are our white country men suffering too.

My fevered imagination pictures two limping figures holding onto each other hobbling toward the sunset- one t-shirt reads, “Black Power?”; the other, “White Privilege?” each agreeing they’ve seen much better days. Against this backdrop, the old animosities are luxuries we can ill afford.

On the plus side “superhero” mindsets often emerge from periods of unrelenting mass misery. That said, the Hood should already resemble Gotham City, awash with crusaders and self-appointed knights jousting a misery index swelling to gargantuan proportions.

Our unsolved crime rate; our chronic life style mortality and other issues are too critical to accept thinking the president is going to swoop down from the sky to save the Hood or Black America period!

Turning this tide around on our own offers the country a model for recovery that doesn’t bust budgets nor gut entitlements.

There are Black folks who’ve been wearing the “cape” of community uplift for awhile. I’m just trying to increase their ranks.

Sisters, brothers — take the cape off Obama and try it on for size where you live!

– Nadra Enzi

This article originally published in the June 27, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.